It's amazing how ideas rise and fall, and how certain concepts resound across time whenever power and concentrations of wealth take hold.

Which is how I discovered Cynicism. Be warned, this delves into philosophy, a topic greatly reviled and treated as a matter only for the lazy and those that avoid work.

So, there's been a lot of propaganda over the years from the Romans who effectively have made the word Cynic into a curse. Course, they also kept the curse and hatred alive well into the conversion from Empire into religion, and the idea of the cynic as a fool who will not believe in the goodness of Humanity is repeated again and again.

I discovered this incredibly great Greek Word that Cynics revered though. It's a word that there's no real translation for in english, but it just sounds beautiful. Eudaimonia

First off, a few notes about the word itself. It's a feminine word. As such, the very nature of it would have absolutely riled many in the patriarchal systems. If you don't believe in that, of course, just feel free to walk up to a Catholic Priest and talk about how much you love Goddess.

The best translation that I can find for the word is "Human Flourishing". It's a concept that shouldn't require much thought, but at the same time is rather revolutionary. With all of the desires for power, wealth and control over life that is rife in modern society, where is the growth of the human?

And thus, Cynicism makes sense to me. Of course, I realized that I'd been naturally living a cynical life for quite some time. I certainly never intend to become the Ideal Cynic, living in a barrel and providing a spectacle for the rich... for such a thing completely abandons the point of being a cynic in the first place.

Life of Poverty? Already there, baby.
Loathe arrogance? Yo!
Looking to be good at things you enjoy, love your fellow man, and think that since nobody's gonna help you you might as well help yourself? Wait, aren't we already doing this?
Write satire calling the current morals and behaviors into sharp relief? OOOOK, this is just getting scary now.
Believe in the importance of training the body as well as the mind? Aaaand with my recent desires to do Judo and actually discuss life again... I've completed the checklist apparently.

It's an honorable thing to be a Cynic, descended as it is from the philosophy of Socrates. Perhaps it's time we stop thinking about Philosophy as a subject in a university taught by the dead, but a mental art which requires mental hard work to master. After all, it's harder to keep a prisoner who has multiple methods of escape available.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHWJ0gY6XLE]